Drug lab scandal will drop more than 376 convictions in Plymouth, Bristol and Norfolk counties

Joe Pelletier The Enterprise jdpelletier_ENT

Thursday

Nov 30, 2017 at 6:11 PMDec 1, 2017 at 4:45 PM

State drug lab scandal expected to vacate more than 6,000 cases across Massachusetts, all involving convicted former chemist Sonja Farak.

More than 376 convictions in Plymouth, Bristol and Norfolk counties will be vacated in a sprawling Massachusetts drug lab scandal, district attorneys said Thursday.

The number of dismissed cases across the state will be upwards of 6,000, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. All are tied to a former chemist, Sonja Farak, who authorities say was high almost every day for eight years while she worked at a state drug lab.

The Plymouth County District Attorney’s office will dismiss about 100 charges that involve analyses completed by Farak, spokesperson Beth Stone said.

Norfolk County, which includes Stoughton, Avon, Holbrook and Randolph, will also dismiss all Farak cases, the DA’s office said. That includes 76 defendants, some with multiple convictions.

Bristol County, which includes Easton and Raynham, will drop more than 200 cases, according to media reports.

Farak pleaded guilty in 2014 to stealing cocaine from the state crime lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was sentenced to 18 months behind bars. Authorities later learned Farak was using drugs nearly every day on the job.

Hampden County, where Springfield is located, plans to drop more than 3,900 convictions, according to district attorney Anthony Gulluni.

The counties’ coordinated filings and announcements came in response to a Committee for Public Counsel Services and the American Civil Liberties Union petition, which asked the state's highest court to craft a remedy for Farak's misconduct.

The organizations held a press conference at the ACLU's downtown Boston office, where they called for all convictions to be dismissed in the Farak cases.

"Dismissal vindicates the rights of our clients' to due process and fair prosecution, and restores the integrity to the justice system by sending a clear message to prosecutors that no conviction will be allowed to stand in the face of such fraud," said Randy Gioia, deputy chief counsel of the CPCS public defender division.

Speakers also blasted state prosecutors involved in the cases. Attorney General Maura Healey's office said some of the suggestions made at the press conference were "false and irresponsible."

After a January ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court, prosecutors identified 21,839 convictions for dismissal in what the ACLU's Carol Rose called a "similarly disturbing but unrelated" involving samples tainted by another former state chemist, Annie Dookhan.

This time, "the scope of misconduct is far worse," Rose said.

"Upon finding out about Ms. Farak's malfeasance, prosecutors from the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office actually misled the courts and the people of Massachusetts about the scope of the scandal," Rose said. "Worse, when the evidence of tampering came to light, Massachusetts' elected district attorneys again failed to notify thousands of people who'd been wrongfully convicted by the tainted evidence, until we sued."

Matthew Segal, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, described what he referred to as "egregious" conduct from prosecutors.

"The attorney general's office in any state should be a law firm for all the people, but for wrongfully convicted people, the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office has not been their law firm," Segal said. "It has been their persecutor. It hid exculpatory evidence from them, it deceived courts and defense attorneys in their cases and despite that, it has not agreed to dismiss a single case that it handled, or even to make lists of which people it harmed. That is shameful."

Charges against the defendants in the tainted cases were brought by district attorneys, though the case against Farak herself was prosecuted by the Attorney General's Office, under former Attorney General Martha Coakley. The Superior Court later found that two former assistant attorneys general, Anne Kaczmarek and Kris Foster, committed prejudicial prosecutorial misconduct in the Farak investigation.

"It's unfortunate that the ACLU chose to stage a press conference without reading the AG’s brief filed in this case, which calls for speedy relief for these defendants," Jillian Fennimore, Healey's communications director, said in a statement.

"Sonja Farak's crimes were egregious and, as our filings today make clear, this office has been working hard to resolve these cases as quickly as possible. Staff in the AG's Office have been working hard for months to review databases, identify the Farak defendants, and secure their speedy relief. For the ACLU to suggest otherwise is false and irresponsible."

Nicole Westcott, who was convicted in a case where Farak was the state drug lab chemist, said at the press conference that as part of her path to sobriety she has had to identify the people she wronged and make amends. Westcott said she wants to see prosecutors do the same.

"I want them to be held accountable like I was held accountable," she said.

[Material from the State House News Service and the Associated Press was used in this report.]

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